Joshua Santilli, born 1981 Check out the hair salon that Josh and his wife M'Lou run: https://www.facebook.com/Strut.the.Salon.Ohio

Comments:

Third career totally improv, running local business group, being a longtime Columbus community activist, working with local entrepreneurs, and working to design and build a South Columbus Fresh Food Campus. Check out our feasibility study, including our 21 support letters:

Also study coordinator for a 2 1/2 year NIH study of neighborhoods and food hubs in Cleveland and Columbus. Check out www.foodnest.org

Second career was job with nonprofit Economic and Community Development Institute, helping people startup small companies in Central and Southwest Ohio. Trained several hundred entrepreneurs. Was volunteer on ECDI's board for a couple years, joined the staff in 2009.

Before that, worked in corporate for 26 years at AT&T, in metro New York/Jersey and here in Columbus, working with software designers and researchers to write and design documentation, training, and websites. At AT&T, after layoffs of dear friends all around me for 8 years, I finally got laid off too in late 2008, but saw it coming for several years and tried to prepare, left with a severance thank goodness, making less money now but doing much more meaningful work.

Mom died on April 1 in 2010 (she died on April Fool's Day... she always did have a sense of humor.) We made her comfortable and were with her at the end, hospice was a big help.

I'm very lucky, I have a wonderful wife, son, family and friends. Nice home, cool neighborhood. Dee is going back to school for her second masters, she is having a career change to become an intervention specialist (special needs) teacher. Dee and I have a wonderful little dog, Luna, she is a lot of fun.

I've really enjoyed doing community work since 1992. Involved with several nonprofits and community organizations. We've provided day care and social services for at-risk families, built parks, shut down crack houses, moved houses, restored historic buildings. Not all projects have succeeded, but we've gotten some good stuff done in our little corner of the world.

I worked at the Hollidaysburg YMCA when the Village People song "YMCA" came out. Now everytime I hear that song at some wedding or on an oldies radio station, I smile and think about nice memories of Hollidaysburg. I enjoyed seeing Hollidaysburg again in April 2010 at mom's funeral, the old town looked good, we were lucky to have beautiful Spring weather at an otherwise dark time.

In May of 2006, my wife, mother-in-law, and I took a few weeks off and drove from Ohio to Wyoming to visit some family, and see the country. The three of us survived the car ride, and are all still friendly. :-) This is a picture of my wife and me taken in May at Independence Pass, on the way to Aspen, Colorado.

Posted: Dec 16, 2013 at 11:58 PM

I love this picture of my wife and me, it was a quick candid shot that my mother-in-law took on this same 2006 vacation, in the dining area of a Bed and Breakfast place that we stayed at in Wyoming.